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By sending you the settings for D300s for the lower rail and for the upper rail for your 18-200mm VRII, I stated that you can use it. With 18mm zoom you have to take a lot of pictures to set up a panorama. Most of us shot with fisheye lenses. That's why I gave the link to the fisheye lenses. You can shoot with 4, 6 or 8 shots to be ready with a fisheye for a single row.

A good addition would be to order the Nadir adaptor to have help with the nadir shot.

Actually this factory irregulars sadden me, as I'm in EU where the cheapest NN5 set is 530$ plus shipping. That's $170 over the irregulars US price and 120$ over the regular one.
NN5+RD16 is 650$ here :'(

I understand what you are talking about. NN5 RD16 is sold for 469 € in NL.

But let me try to explain: I received my pre-ordered Pano Pole with some other accessories yesterday. Price: $482.06 in total. Included shipping costs in this price: $182.54 being on the way from 15.- 21Oktober. For $60 less it is on its way 4-6 weeks, when it is not stuck in customs. When it was deliver at my door, I had to pay nearly another 100€ for taxes and customs. And this price is without any profit for a reseller.

So we have to imagine that the all in price we pay to a reseller has to include shipping, customs, taxes, pre-payed money to have it in stock, the time he has to spend to take our calls "When do my parts arrive?", plus he tries to serve us just asking an extra special ring for NN3 or an extra lens ring. With extra orders. The moment they place an extra order for a $10 ring, the profit is gone the moment they sit at the PC to order it. For the rest they pay extra money to serve us.

Of course we can say he has chosen for this business himself. But that's not fair. They have to spend the same amount of time to order an extra ring for NN3 as well as an order for you with NN5 NN3 R1 pole. So we also have to pay for their service plus I suppose for a not so high profit with this gear.

When a customer tells me it is much cheaper in Istanbul, I tell him he has the choice to get it there. But in case something goes wrong, he has to take another flight to Istanbul to get service or deal with a reclamation.

Live yourself, but give others the chance to live as well. Otherwise once upon a time we have to take a rowing boat to US to get the Nodal Ninja Parts on our own.

So I am glad to find european resellers like Badders in UK, Vincen in France and Mauro in Italy. Following the forum you will recognize their engagement and knowledge. But I think, they like to have a nice meal at the end of a working day like you and me.

Actually this factory irregulars sadden me, as I'm in EU where the cheapest NN5 set is 530$ plus shipping. That's $170 over the irregulars US price and 120$ over the regular one.
NN5+RD16 is 650$ here :'(

Kosmarnik,

I see where you're coming from. It can be quite frustrating. When I worked in Norway, I constantly had colleagues complain about online pricing in their own country than what could be found elsewhere, in particular, the US.

Heinz has a point, though. The customs, VAT, and handling comes at a cost. You could personally avoid some of this by doing the transaction yourself, but it becomes complicated even with reputable sellers.

I'm a voracious online shopper, but rarely have I needed to purchase outside the US. When I have, it has been a long and complicated process. I ordered some cycling stuff from Germany last year. I waited two months after the ship date, it never arrived. The tracking went dead when it hopped the plane. Fortunately, the vendor was reputable, and agreed to resend the merchandise.

The second package arrived two weeks later, and the first package arrived the very next day. I returned one of the packages, but it cost the vendor $30USD to send that second package. They said they had a 30% rate of reships with customers in the US.

Purchasing from Asia isn't as difficult, but it depends on so many factors, it's difficult for a single customer to keep track of.

Remember that much of the cost goes to VAT and overseas shipping. The rest may or may not be worth your while to take a chance.

In the mean time, they way this country is being run, we'll soon be paying taxes as high or higher than your own. Cheap taxes were nice while it lasted, but others have decided that my money will be better put to use increasing bureaucracy, mismanagement, and waste in our government.

Actually, I'm just outside EU, Croatia. We have even higher VAT here (23%). Lets say I want to buy locally, a Guitar Hero bundle, it's 250EUR locally, but only 160Eur from Amazon.de (that's with shipping and VAT). Amazon US has the same thing at 100EUR. Great!

I love panoramic pictures, i've already done one that i like but, as it's just a single image crop, it's not really detailed... So i want to buy a pano head... I was interested in buying a NN5 with an RD16 but as it's discontinued i decided to wait for the new model... Any idea when it will be available? It's supposed to be my christmas gift :)

So i want to buy a pano head... I was interested in buying a NN5 with an RD16 but as it's discontinued i decided to wait for the new model... Any idea when it will be available? It's supposed to be my christmas gift :)

Sorry, still working hard on its production. More info will be released in Dec. It is unlikely you can get it for X'mas gift.